


Every Second You're Alive

by vaccine_ninja



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-07-06
Packaged: 2018-07-18 07:07:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7304473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaccine_ninja/pseuds/vaccine_ninja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Laurens doesn't know much about Alexander Hamilton--only that he's in the hospital and likes social justice. Even so, he finds himself moving closer to Alexander. Despite that Alex is judgmental and embarrassed by John. Despite that Alex never sleeps. Despite all the secrets he's hiding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bagel Boy

“I’m going to grab some coffee,” says John Laurens, patting his father’s shoulder softly. His father is quiet. John’s knees pop when he gets up, and he rolls his head a little, and he strolls leisurely down the halls. The hospital walls are white, and the floor is white, and there aren’t even any boring watercolor paintings hanging generically in the halls. John passes an open door with a young man sitting cross-legged on a hospital bed, typing on an ancient dinosaur of a laptop.

The cafeteria isn’t much farther from that room, only one left turn, one right, and another left. John walks back past the door when he gets his coffee (which is hardly coffee, really, as much as it is cream and sugar) and blueberry bagel--that is, he walks until he hears the patient on the laptop, whom John is passing again, call out: “Hey, bagel boy!”

John looks behind him.

“Yeah, you, bagel boy, come in here for a second,” the boy says. He isn’t even looking at John.

John looks to see if the nurses bustling past him have noticed. One nurse pushing a wheelchair makes a face when the boy speaks. John steps inside the room.

“Which sounds better--here I refer to social prejudice towards Pacific Islanders--‘The belief that all persons from Pacific Islands are the equivalent of persons in a sleepy backwater of the United States, with minimal education, is blah blah blah’ or ‘It is a common and damaging stereotype that all persons from Pacific Islands are the equivalent of persons in a sleepy backwater of the United States and have had only a minimal education, and this stereotype is blah blah blah?’ "

The boy hardly pauses for a breath and doesn’t up at John for a second. “Well? Which one?”

The boy is a mess. The skin on his face looks like it's barely hanging on, and his posture is twisted, like he's a tree that was planted in his hospital bed long ago.

“Well, uh, the second one, I guess,” John says.

“No, no--that one’s awful--these are both awful--bad choice. I have to rewrite this entire section now,” the boys says, and he pushes the hair off his forehead with the palm of his hand.

“Oh. Sorry. I’m not very good at these things, I guess.”

The boy doesn’t respond. He’s biting his lip and he’s reading the page over and over.

“My name is John. Uh, Laurens, I mean. John Laurens,” John says, and he makes a face at himself that the boy doesn’t notice.

“Alexander Hamilton,” the boy says, and he begins typing again.

There’s a shape in the doorway, and John turns around, coffee sloshing, quiet enough so that only he can hear. A doctor steps into the room, and he’s tall, over six feet. “Alexander,” the doctor says.

His name is Washington. John remembers him; he’s a man of whom John’s father has often spoken highly. He has the presence of a man who came out of the womb being all-knowing. Washington had performed breakthrough surgeries in his field, whatever field that was, because John couldn’t remember much else that his father had said about Washington. Washington had done the odd surgery or two on John’s father in his old age, but Washington doesn’t appear to recognize--much less notice--John at all.

Alexander stops typing and looks at Washington, and they stare at each other for a moment. “Doctor.”

John quietly backs out of the room, taking a sip of his coffee and making a face when he burns his tongue. A nurse with a clipboard and a pen tucked into her breast pocket passing in the hall asks, “Did he drag you in there? He’s in one of his moods again.” She says it as though his moods come around quite often.

“Oh, um, yes, ma’am,” John says. “But it was no trouble.”

The nurse smiles and nods as though she doesn’t like his answer and keeps walking.

John shuffles nervously behind her a few feet, which is new for him, because he’s never done anything nervously in his life, except seventh grade, when he realized other boys didn’t stare so long in the locker rooms and tried to tell his family. He rolls his shoulders again, and he swings his arm around in a half-assed attempt to make it pop.

A nurse is checking on John’s father back in Mr. Laurens’s hospital room. She starts talking to John about vitals and updates that John doesn’t understand much. She leaves quietly, and John falls into the chair pulled up next to his father’s bed with a loud huff. His coffee sloshes quietly.

He sets down his coffee on a table next to him and lets the bagel slide from his hand to his lap. His eyes droop as if ten pound weights are dangling from each eyelash.

* * *

He wakes up with a start. The jacket on the back of his chair left prints in his arm. His coffee is cold. John peers into the cup, sloshes it around a bit, and takes a sip. He looks up at his father, and his father is staring back.

“Afternoon,” John says.

His father is quiet.

“How are you feeling?”

His father grunts and adjusts himself on the bed. His hospital gown is wrinkled all over. “Fine.”

John tries to smile, and he does his best, but he looks vaguely like a clock wound too tight. "That's good."

"Don't give me that look."

John stops smiling. "Sorry."

The sound of his father's breathing fills the room, feeling like a ten pound weight on John's chest.

"You're just sitting here when you could be doing something productive."

"Dad," John says. "I want to be here with you."

"I didn't raise you to talk back this way."

John almost laughs, because he doesn't know what else to do. It's pointless, at this point, to get angry. "Fine," he says. "If that'll make you happy."

"Thank you."

John knows his father is struggling. He knows his father is probably just ashamed, or embarrassed, or whatever. But he can't help himself from storming out of the hospital, leaving his jacket and coffee and bagel in the hospital room.

On the way out, he passes Alexander's room again. The door is closed this time, and the lights are off. John wrinkles his nose and walks faster.


	2. We Met At The Hospital

The campus green is particularly lovely this fine September day. The grass is wet, and it stains the bottom of John’s jeans dark. He’s been circling the campus for half an hour. John can’t admit to being lost--John Laurens is _never_ lost. But he’s desperate for a familiar face. Any familiar face.

In theory, he was meant to meet a friend of his on campus, but the friend has yet to be found. John left the car on with his dog inside, to boot, and he doesn’t want to spend more on gas than he needs to spend.

John crosses the campus quickly, looking back and forth for his friend. He’s doubled back twice already, in case he’s been passing his friend without noticing. John stops, suddenly, when he sees a familiar face. Alexander Hamilton, the one John met at the hospital, is talking to some man with a smooth face, who looks like he could belong anywhere, if he so wishes. They’re having some kind of one-sided heated conversation. Alexander’s the only heated one, and his hand gestures keep getting bigger and bigger.

“Hey!” John calls. He doesn’t know why he calls out, but he’s moving before he’s thinking. He does that a lot. He strides forward with his arm out before its time and taps Alexander on the shoulder. Alexander turns his head. “Hey. It’s Alexander, right?”

Pause.

“I’m John.”

Pause.

“John Laurens.”

Pause.

“We met at the hospital.”

Alexander makes a little noise like he’s just been punched but is trying to keep quiet. He turns back to the man from before. “Excuse me for a minute.”

He pulls John by the elbow a few feet away from Burr. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you.” Alexander’s smile is tight-lipped and twisted like a clock wound up to the point of breaking. “It’s been a crazy week. Do you go to school here?”

“Um, no--I go to school in London. I’m pre-med right now, but I might switch to pre-law,” he says, sort of trailing off.

Alexander doesn’t say anything.

“Look,” he says, starting again, “I just wanted to say hi and ask how your essay’s going.”

“Which one?”

John falters. How many essays can one man write in three days? “The one about immigration.”

“Oh, that,” Alexander says. “I published it days ago.”

“You were writing it _Sunday_.”

“Yes,” Alexander says, and he’s bouncing, like he’s been in one spot for too long and needs the conversation to be over. “I finished it Sunday and sent it out.”

John didn’t really like the way Alexander was speaking, but he’d just gotten an earful from his mother about not having any _American_ friends. She'd probably blame Europe for turning John gay.

“Woah, dude, that’s fast. Like, really fast.”

Alexander stands up a little straighter and turns ever so slightly, like he’s showing himself off. “I know.”

John feels awkward, in that sudden way when one feels as though the human body has too many limbs and no use for them. “Um. Well,” he says, “I should go. I’m supposed to be picking up my friend--”

“Yeah, you _should_ go,” Alexander says, without bothering to pretend he regrets John leaving.

Suddenly John feels the need to stay, if only to drive this asshole nuts. He makes a show of looking at his watch. “Actually,” he says, and he can practically see Alexander bristling, “I just realized I’m half an hour early. Mind if I stick with you?”

Jesus Christ. John’s friend is going to kill him for making him wait this long. His poor dog.

“I’m sorry,” Alexander says, smiling his smile that reminds John of a clock again, “but are we friends?”

John’s Southern sensitivities are upset by this.

“Excuse you? Look, I’m sorry for fucking intruding, asshole. I’m done. I’ll back off,” he says, and the man from before comes up to stand behind Alexander. John is startled to remember this man still exists.

“Is everything alright, gentlemen?” the man asks.

“Dude, I’m leaving. We’re cool,” John says. “Chill.”

Alexander sneers. “We’re cool. Sure,” he says, “even though you interrupted my important conversation, and you exposed _personal_ information--”

The other man puts his hand on Alexander’s shoulder. “Let him be.”

Alexander shakes him off. “And _you_.” He’s not even looking at the man, just scowling and looking somewhere above John’s head. “You’re so indecisive--why can’t you just stop fucking pretending to be so nice all the time?”

The man is quiet.

John is ready to punch this asshole. “Look, I already said I’m sorry. I have better things to be doing, anyways.”

Alexander frowns and turns back to the man. “Anyways, Burr--”

John really shouldn’t be lingering. He isn’t really sure what to do with himself, though. He needs to stop getting into fights with random strangers. But he honestly doesn’t know where his friend is, and he’d really rather be here, anyways.

“Alexander--maybe we should save this conversation for another day,” the man--Burr--says, looking over Alexander’s shoulder, at John.

John doesn’t quite understand Burr’s expression.

Burr says something vague and polite to Alexander, and they shake hands, and Burr turns his back and walks away without another word.

Alexander stands, for a moment, quiet. Then he turns, and he realizes John is still there. “I thought you said you were leaving, you ass,” he says.

John doesn’t have a comeback or anything, so he just leaves. By the time he circles back to the campus green, Alexander is gone, and his friend is waving from the center of the green.

* * *

John, by the time he arrives home, starts to feel--ever so slightly--guilty, for the way he’s acted around Alexander. Alexander had the right to be angry, after all, John supposes. Even though Alexander did seem to be quick to go to extremes.

John’s house is quiet, except for the clatter of his dog’s nails scratching the hardwood floors as she runs off to check on her bed. He knows no one is there, but he calls out, “I’m home!” anyways. His voice echoes.

The stairs each have their own tune to squeak to when John steps on them, like some kind of ancient piano that’s gone out of tune. He walks slowly, as though there’s a monster waiting upstairs to get him.

In reality, there is no monster (of course there isn’t) waiting in his room. John throws his phone on his bed, but it slides off and clatters against the ground loudly. He picks it up and stares. There’s a crack down the middle.

“Fuck,” he says. He’d just gotten the glass replaced a week before. He’s not sure his dad will pay for it breaking _again_.

He throws it down on his bed again, and he tenses while he waits for it to fall, but it doesn’t, so he relaxes.

He’s curious about Alexander now, so he sits down in front of his computer and puts his cheek to his hand and taps his fingers on the desk while he waits for the browser to load. The first thing to pop up, when John searches Alexander’s name, is a Twitter account. There are a lot of tweets about equal rights and politics. The arguments are pretty good, John has to admit, but it’s all stuff he already agrees with, so he can’t really be objective. Other people seem to like Alexander, though. But a lot more seem to hate him.

The further John scrolls, the more arguments he sees. A couple make John smile. Maybe, he thinks, he shouldn’t have tried to get under Alexander’s skin on purpose. Then again, maybe Alexander’s just an asshole all the time.

There’s the sound of the door opening, and the dog barking and jumping, and bags of groceries hitting the counter, the plastic wrinkling.

“John, honey!” his mother calls.

John shuts his laptop. Family dinners weren’t an option.

“We brought dinner!”

John goes down the stairs with great speed and heavy footsteps, and the dog barks and wags her tail.

His mother is opening the box of pizza downstairs, and his sister is pulling out a stack of the plates--the fancy ones, the only kind they keep in the Laurens household.

“What’ve you been doing today, John?” his mother asks, looking down at her hands as she makes three plates.

“I was looking up this kid online,” John says. “We met at the hospital.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :/


End file.
